If you, like me, sometimes find distraction in anything and everything other than your work, paring down your digital workspace to maximize productivity can be a daunting task. Fortunately, Mac OS X comes with some built-in tools that you can use to combat your lack of willpower. These tools are cleverly disguised as Parental Controls.

Sure, OS X’s built-in Parental Controls may be used to monitor and limit your child’s usage of your Mac, but I’ve found that some crafty tinkering can turn this set of options into a powerful way of managing your distractions and keeping yourself on-task. The following set of steps is meant to be a guide on how to set up Parental Controls to increase your productivity, but feel free to amend the guide based on the distractions you need to eliminate most.

Kids and computers go together like peanut butter and jelly. Or like crayons and white-painted walls… My point is that kids start using computers earlier and earlier, and many of them become very adept and quite precocious at an extremely young age.

There are significant dangers out there: the online world is a new place to be concerned about what your kids are up to, and we’ve all heard too many stories already of youngsters getting into trouble online. Happily, your Mac comes with a few bits of protection built in, and there are some good applications available to help you extend those controls.

I’m going to talk you through three different ways that you can go about putting in place better online safety precautions: via OS X’s built-in Parental Controls, with an external application, and by getting to the heart of how your computer interfaces with the internet, by taking control of your DNS settings.